Privacy Policy

This Privacy Notice encompasses the Eastern Maine Healthcare System, its member organizations, its strategic affiliate Houlton Regional Hospital, and all subsidiaries of these entities.

Eastern Maine Healthcare System, its member organizations, and strategic affiliates have created the online security and privacy policy in order to implement our firm commitment to protecting the integrity of confidential information, and the manner in which this information is used. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for this website for the organizations.

It is the policy of the Eastern Maine Healthcare System not to share personally identifiable information received through the EMHS website to outside parties without prior approval from the owner of that information. EMHS abides by all local, state, and federal regulation regarding the protection of private information (for example, HIPAA, the federal Health Information Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.) Please see our Notice of Privacy Practices for information on how EMHS uses your protected health information pursuant to HIPAA.
Below is a synopsis of our Privacy and Security Policy.

If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the security practices of, or your dealings with this or any EMHS sponsored website, you can contact:

Contact Form
Our site's contact form requires users to give us contact information (like their name and email address), and demographic information (like their zip code, age, or income level). The user's contact information is used to contact the user when necessary and/or forward information to the appropriate person and/or department and/or organization.

IP Address
We use your IP (Internet Protocol) address to help diagnose problems with our server, and to administer our website. Your IP address is used to gather broad demographic information. No personally identifiable information is gathered through the collection of your IP address.

Registration
Our sites may also offer on-line registration for clinical services and/or educational classes. Any registration form that requires users to give us contact information (like their name and email address), unique identifiers (like their social security number), financial information (like their account or credit card numbers), and demographic information (like their zip code, age, or income level) is protected by the EMHS Privacy and Security Policy.

Additional Links
EMHS sites often contain links to other websites as a service to users. Eastern Maine Healthcare System, its members and strategic affiliates are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of these externally sponsored websites.

Online Surveys
Our online surveys may ask users for contact information (like their email address) and demographic information (like their zip code, age, or income level). The user's contact information is used to contact the user if/when necessary. The intent of any survey will be included in the request for the user to participate in the survey itself.

Cookies
Eastern Maine Healthcare web sites use cookies for statistical tracking purposes, or to aid in the personalization of a display to the local EMHS member based on broad demographic information. When a cookie is used, no personally identifiable information is collected. Users who opt out of receiving a cookie placement may lose some personal customization of our web services.

Children's Guidelines
Some sections of our web sites may be designed specifically for use by children under the age of 18. Contact information such as name and e-mail address, and demographic information such as ZIP code or age may be requested in those sections. In such cases, children will be notified that they should obtain permission from their parents before providing such information.
Eastern Maine Healthcare does not disclose personally identifiable information about users under 18, whether or not an approval is obtained. Information about users under the age of 18 may be shared with third parties on an aggregate basis, without personally identifiable information included. Parents and those permitting minors to use our websites should be aware that any information voluntarily given by children to public domains such as chat sessions, email exchanges, bulletin boards, public forums, etc., may be viewable by all Internet users and may be used by third parties without our permission to generate unsolicited mail or other contact with children.

Disclosure
It is the policy of EMHS to disclose to the user the intent of the collection of any data, and the means in which that data will be used on a case by case basis. This disclosure will allow the user to decide beforehand if they wish to provide the data requested, and/or of the impact if the request is denied. Some additional disclosure points include:
Users may opt-out of receiving future mailings; see the choice/opt-out section below. Demographic and profile data is sometimes collected at various locations throughout our site. We use this data to help personalize our users' experience at our site, showing them content that we think they might be interested in, and displaying the content according to their preferences. Financial information that is collected is used only to bill the user for products and services utilized. Unique identifiers (such as social security numbers) are collected only for registration and educational event enrollment.

Security
EMH member websites have security measures in place to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of the information under our control. EMHS employs strict security measures to safeguard online transactions via secure sections of any EMHS site. The current level of encryption technology used to secure transactions is Secure Socket Layer (SSL) version 3.0, at 128-Bit encryption providing the user's PC is configured to enable this level of encryption.

Choice/Opt-Out
The EMHS websites provide users the following options to remove their information from our database, eliminate future communications, and no longer to receive our online notification service.